The present invention is intended for use in connection with position-coding patterns. Such patterns have the property that if part of the pattern is detected optically, the position of this part in the total pattern can be determined unambiguously. Examples of such patterns are described in WO 01/26032, WO 00/73983 and WO 99/50787. Using such position-coding patterns, which can be called abstract, a very large area can be coded with good resolution. A very small subset of the total pattern is sufficient to position code, for instance, an A4 sheet.
As described in the above references, a digital pen can be provided with an optical detector which is capable of reading the pattern. If a user writes with the pen on a position-coded base, a sequence of positions can be recorded, which constitutes a digital copy of what has been written on the base.
This technique opens the possibility of letting a base, for instance in the form of a sheet of paper, constitute an interface for an application in a computer system communicating with the pen. By filling in preprinted, position-coded fields on the sheet of paper, the user can generate information which may then be utilized by an application in the computer system.
Many types of applications can in this way utilize the combination digital pen/position-coded base, for instance e-mail programs, word-processing programs, drawing programs etc.
The computer system then requires a function which distributes incoming position data to the right application.
A conceivable possibility of achieving this is to link certain sub areas or domains of the abstract position-coding pattern to certain applications. The computer system may then check which application is connected to the page (domain) in the abstract position-coding pattern utilized by the pen. The computer system then informs the pen which application is connected to data generated on the page, after which the pen sends the data to the right application in the computer system.
A problem associated with the approach above arises when several different software suppliers manufacture programs of the same type. Different sheets of paper are then necessary in order to be able to utilize an equivalent program/application from different suppliers and, vice versa, a number of different applications may be required to be able to utilize paper products from different suppliers. It is thus difficult to achieve anything but a one-to-one relation between a paper product and an application. As a rule, this makes it impossible for a user, who prefers a paper product from a first supplier and an application from a second supplier, to utilize such a product/application combination.
Furthermore most of the applications receiving position data from a pen/drawing device frequently refine (convert) this data to another format (for instance a graphical format such as .gif, .pdf, etc). It is not certain that other applications can utilize such formats. When a new application is installed, it will thus not have access to previously received information which can be relevant to the services implemented by the application since the information has already been transferred to other applications.